Hello everyone, I am looking for ideas on good incentive for people to post. What are some things I could offer that would be worth trading in points for? I have a few things already but, I was wondering if anyone had an original idea that worked wonders for them. The forums is "Tech" based if that helps anyone.

Just off the top of my head, but what about something like a flash drive or a subscription to a tech related site?

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sounds v v v good to me

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BigRossCo
ChatzWorld

Yeah, I think I am looking more for the "free" department. I am not charging for anything on the site or the forums, so if I offer something that I have to pay for then I would be losing money! So far, what I have is "rent a forum". Now, I am looking for other things that I could offer that doesn't cost any actual money!

You could allow them to purchase a premium subscription to your site and they get a special supporters forum for all the "supporters" to talk in, and maybe there username a special color and a badge under there name.

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If you're not willing to pay money for a tech forum, you're going to a have a really hard time attracting interest. Still, you could offer some basic incentives to post. Premium membership sounds like a good one to me.

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The Nerd Council
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Hmmm, I understand your points but, why should I have to pay people to get help from me for free?? I am mainly trying to build an open-source development community. here is the link to the main site http://www.theworldisyours.frih.net/ and the link to the forums is The World is Yours :: Index hopefully this will help to get an understanding of what I am trying to do.

A community that posts without any incentives is usually much more closer than the one that does it for a reward.

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Sometimes you have to spend money to make money. Also members might not be able to remember your domain, you might wanna get a .com, but that is your choice to. I can't think of anything else free you could try.

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Agreed.

The problem is that there are already so many free "tech/computer/software support" forums out there today. If you're not willing to spend money or come up with a creative idea of some sort, you're not going to make it big. If you're fine with a few members here and there, then there's no need for you to spend any money or kill yourself trying to come up with a good idea.

If I'm doing a google search for something about open source software and come across two communities - Dev Shed Forums - Open Source web development and your forums, which one am I going to choose? I choose the huge forums unless you convince me otherwise...In order to get new members in such a saturated market, you've got to have something unique and/or valuable to offer. A free points system alone is not going to do it.

I can tell you one thing...We spent a lot of money on AF and also came up with some very valuable tools and resources for it (PostFusion, Demos, Articles, Tutorials, Interviews, Skins, and Graphics). If we didn't do these things, we wouldn't be anywhere close to where we are today.

You don't have to spend money to be successful (although it definitely helps), but if you can't spend money, then you have got to come up with something unique that nobody else offers. You can't just do the same thing that all the other forums are doing...and unfortunately, you're probably not going to find many people here (or anywhere else) who are going to give you these unique ideas. They wouldn't be unique if everybody knew them, and those who think of the unique ideas are likely to use them themselves - not tell everybody else.

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